That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.

I am 100% positive that there is a Christian praise and worship song session going on in the room next to mine.  

There is a guitar, several female voices, harmonizing, and, for some reason, English lyrics.  I think my two female roommates are involved, given that they have Jesus-related posters on their doors.  It’s, as far as I can tell, a very untypical German Christianity.  Christine spent a year doing missionary work in North Carolina, so I sense some American 21st century Intense Christianity influence.  

This is, of course, not bad.  I LOVE my new apartment – big room, direct sunlight, Comedy Central, comfortable level of messiness.  And my roommates are all such sweethearts – Christine, Eva, and Jonas.  They’re all genuinely kind, approachable people, and living with them so far has been really great.  Just, you know.  A little more Jesus-y than normal.  

I actually had a really interesting discussion with Jonas in our kitchen a day or two ago about the Gaza war and what it was like, as a liberal American Jew currently chilling in Germany, to read the news and have to figure out where I stand.  There was supposedly a big pro-Palestinian rally in Stadtmitte on Saturday, planned and supported by various Muslim organizations from the area.  I didn’t see it, since I was ass-sliding (on 3 Euro plastic “Po-Rutchers,” literally “butt sliders”) in the snow in Hinterzarten with Erin, Mark, Katherine, and a large number of gleeful children, screaming teenagers, and parents on vintage-looking wooden sleighs racing down the mountain at warp speed with tiny, stoic “Yeah I’m hurtling down a cold, steep incline what’s your problem” German babies in their laps, but when we got back to Freiburg around 2pm, or 4pm, or whenever it was that we got back, there was a (small) group of people standing on the Platz den alten Synogogue (location of the former synagogue, destroyed during Kristallnacht), holding Israeli flags and big spray painted signs that said things like “Solidarity with Israel” and the like, in German.  They didn’t say anything.  The perimeter of the Platz den alten Synogogue was lined with police in riot gear.  

I am currently in the process of self-university-ing myself – I have one class, one a week for an hour and a half, til mid February, then no class whatsoever til mid April.  The wonder of the German semester system.  My IES classes, which were timed to the American system, ended in December.  I’m still “dramaturging” The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard for the maniACTs, the English language theatre group, although in this case it means writing “About the Playwright” and “About the Play” pieces for the program, and I got roped into doing props as well, although I don’t quite remember saying a definitive yes and now regret it, given that it is not so much a design job as a find these items please even though the closest Goodwill to Freiburg is most likely the Davis Square one in Somerville, MA.  And there is jackshit in the “props closet.”  Sigh.  The maniACTs are good people, all really nice, searching for props just makes me anxious and unhappy.  

By “self-university-ing,” I mean that I can read whatever I want all day, interspersed with watching German TV and sometimes having a social life.  It’s wonderful.  I just finished “Russendisko” by Wladimir Kaminer, a Russian Jewish theatre-y journalism-y writer type guy who immigrated to East Germany right after the wall fell, in 1990.  He writes short stories about living in Berlin, and I simply adore him.  I picked up the book a few days ago in Thalia, a local bookstore, because the title sounded vaguely familiar from reading Tufts German dept. syllabi.  It was really enjoyable and perfect for my level of German – short stories, mostly not more than three or four pages.  It’s published in the US as “Russian Disco.”  Recommended.  I’m gonna try to find his other stuff at the Freiburg city library or in the Germanistik dept. library.  

I also do not think I can stress enough my love for German reality shows.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:  Goodbye Deutschland is one of the most entertaining things I’ve ever seen on television.  Auf und Davon: Meine Auslandstagebuch (perhaps translated as “Out and About”?  or literally like….”up/on and of it”?  the second part is “my foreign country diary”) is also lots of fun, and comes with the benefit of a website where the (mostly) teenagers write about wherever it is they are – many are high school students doing semester or year exchange programs.  

I’ve spent the past two days in complete and utter hibernation, leaving my bedroom only to take care of necessary things like getting food from the fridge and taking a shower, and I celebrated my reemergence into the world by spending three hours reading “Russendisko” in Limette, a newly discovered cafe right next to the Paula-Modersohn-Platz streetcar stop, around a five minute walk from where I live.  It has floor to ceiling windows, a really nice waiter, an awesome chandelier, proved itself to be excellent for people watching (most places in Freiburg are), and best of all, the really nice waiter didn’t care that I took three hours to drink one coffee.

Tatsaetlich…Liebe!

This is your friendly every couple weeks or months or so reminder that I am still alive. Alive, done with finals, done with papers, just demolished a grapefruit, and prior to that took Warner to the train station with Mark and Erin. Warner, Tara, Kallie, Sergio…and we lose almost everyone else tomorrow. It’s so surreal to see everyone packing up and talking about buying train tickets to Frankfurt and direct flights to the US and cultural shock and what they’re going to eat when they’re home, and then there’s, generally, me, Mark, and Erin laughing and smiling at each other, just with sort of hahaha WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON eyes. In the sense that most of our friends are peacing out back to the States for good, while we have another seven months to go. That’s more time to GO than we’ve already SPENT here. It is very, very strange.

It hasn’t 100% hit, of course. Kallie’s coming back in January. Tara was in Film class, and then didn’t come out with us and Leithold. It wasn’t a Big Deal. Sergio started crying on the dance floor in StuSie last night, but everyone was drunk and sweaty and having a wonderful time, and it wasn’t Real. We just watching a train to Frankfurt pull away with a Warner inside, but…it’s Warner. “She’ll be back,” except for the fact that she won’t, because she’s going to be in Illinois til February and then at IES Buenos Aires. I’m going to Schlappen with Alyssa, Deirdre, and Moser tomorrow afternoon, which is a totally normal thing to do, except afterwards they too will be boarding a train to Frankfurt, and not coming back.

…WHAT THE FUCK. The remainders: me, Mark, Erin, Dan, Matt, Lauren, Kallie. Sort of Tom, but he’s switching into the EU program. People in Freiburg during the Pause…me. Lauren and Kallie are/will be in the US, Matt’s going to Austria, Erin’s going to Italy and England, Mark’s going to Amsterdam. Dan and Mark will be back, and we might meet Erin in Basel for New Year’s. And by might I mean I am. But. And then the Pause is over, and “classes start again,” except that just means Uni courses, and I have one, and it’s every Wednesday from 12-1:30. What the FUCK else am I gonna do. I love the people staying for a year, but it’s not the whole big group that we’ve all gotten used to. Ian phrased it really well, I think…”I want to go home for break, but come back for next semester to the same group of people.” GENAU.
Last night was wonderful, though. Wednesdays are 50 cent shot night at StuSie, and there were tons of us and tons of Germans there, had some wonderful conversations, had some delicious Blutorange shots, perhaps more than some, and then danced for over three hours. SO. MUCH. FUN. Also SO SWEATY. Around a thousand degrees more humid and disgusting in that room of StuSie than anywhere else. But OMIGOSH so much fun. It was just lots of us, and just…lots of fun. I’m sure there are hilarious embarrassing pictures documenting the whole deal.

…Goodbyes suck.

“Es hat etwas mit Jesus zu tun…Ich habe keine Ahnung, wirklich”

This morning I walked into my kitchen to find my lovely Swedish roommate, Sophia, and her younger sister laughing at the kitchen table and listening to “All I Want for Christmas is You” from Love Actually.  They were drinking glog, the Swedish version of gluehwein, out of Freiburger Weihnachtsmarkt gluehwein glasses, and were eating from two bowls, one full of these twisty pastries made with raisins, and, apparently, saffron, and one of heart-shaped gingerbread.  More like, gingersnaps, really.  There was a candelabra of some sort…four white candles, and Sophia had just attempted and failed at lighting the first one, which is why they were laughing.  

It seems that today is the first day of Advent, or the first Advent…I’m not sure how you say it.  You count down the last four Sundays to Christmas Day, I think.  And you light a candle each Sunday.  And maybe pray.  Sophia said it had something to do with Jesus, but really it seems more to do with pastries.  Which I think is great.  The music continued to play from Sophia’s iPod dock on the kitchen floor, “Love, Actually” soundtrack to “So This is Christmas (War is Over)” by John Lennon, to “O Holy Night” in Swedish to a very 1950’s-sounding “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”  

Swedish sounds so foreign to me.  There’s nothing that I can grasp onto, like in Spanish, or even French sometimes.  It just sounds like A Foreign Language.  I really like it.  Languages always sound the prettiest when happy young girls are speaking them.  And eating cookies.

 I was speaking to Sophia in German, and then I realized that maybe her sister couldn’t understand, so I asked which was better for me to speak in, English or German, because I didn’t want to be rude, and Sophia translated that into Swedish.  The sister, who I met last time she visited but whose name I can’t remember, said, in German, that she spoke a little German, and then proceeded to speak English.  Which I think she also speaks a little of.  She’s 16, so she hasn’t studied English as long as Sophia has.  But they do start way early anyways.  So maybe she’s just more shy.  I was trying to explain in a German/English mix that me and Sophia normally try to speak German, but we both know that if we don’t know a word, if we say it in English, we’ll both get it.  This did not come across to the sister.  It had to be translated into Swedish too.

Apparently the coast of Sweden is really pretty in spring and summer.  The north of the country is good in fall and winter?  I don’t remember exactly.  I want to go to Sweden.  Ian, a kid in my program, was in Stockholm recently.  He said it was incredibly beautiful and incredibly expensive, but worth it.  

This morning I made a peanut tofu/tomato/garlic/cream cheese omelette with real Philadelphia cream cheese that I bought at Reve yesterday, and settled down to watch an old favorite on Vox – Goodbye Deutschland.  Goodbye Deutschland, for those with poor memories, is an excellent German reality show documenting German families emigrating to other countries and generally acting silly and confused in their new homes.  Today was Paraguay, Sweden, and Texas.  A new episode is just starting, and it looks like SOMEONE got it into their head to actually move to Majorca.  Oh, Germany.  

I drink more milk here, on a daily  basis, than I have at any other point in my life.  It’s because it’s unpasteurized and absolutely delicious, and probably comes directly from cows currently lounging in the Black Forest a few miles away.  Actually, what I want to say can be better expressed in German.  There’s a word, “vermutlich,” that is a lot like the English word “probably,” only without doubt.  So if you want to say probably, but really you’re absolutely sure, you say vermutlich.  I guess in English you could say definitely, but in German you could also say definitely.  But you don’t.  You say vermutlich, I suppose to hint that you COULD say probably, if you really wanted to.  So maybe there’s the slightest touch of doubt.  Anyways.  That’s how I feel about milking cows in the Schwarzwald.  

I could REALLY go for some paprika chips right now, which are essentially barbeque chips, because paprika means peppers, or maybe some Kinder Schokolade.  Unfortunately, it is Sunday, which means everything is closed except restaurants.  Sigh.  

I’m going to return to to Goodbye Deutschland, and hunt around for something sweet and unhealthy to eat, clean my absolutely disgusting room, and perhaps work on my scary term paper.  Compiling research, and writing an organized paper from that research, in German, is hard.  So hard, in fact, that my response so far to “I should really work on my paper” has been to take a nap.  But I mean I guess that’s my response to most things.

Lebst du noch?

I am indeed still alive, as it turns out.  The more stuff I have to do, the less time I have to write about it.  Also, the less stuff I have to do, the more I nap.  Woops.  Some people never change.  

Lots of exciting things have happened in the past month plus.  I went to Bologna to visit Kate, and it was pretty much one of the best weekends ever.  I learned how to make German Christmas cookies.  I went hiking some more in the Black Forest.  I went wandering through a huge, old, beautiful cemetery in Emmendingen, which is a small town with a pretty old city center not far from Freiburg with Mark and Erin, and then bought boots.  Have been spending a positively sizable amount of time with Mark and Erin.  We saw Maria, Erin’s roommate from Barcelona, at the Christmas Market a few nights ago, and as she left she turned to me and said, “So are you gonna be over again tonight?”  Because I’m becoming a permanent fixture at Erin’s place.  Moritz, Maren, and Maria…they love me.  They best.  I mean, they really have no choice, seeing how often they wake up in the morning to find me passed out on their kitchen bed.

Speaking of having to spend many a pleasant night at Erin’s: I am officially moving OUT of Haendel and TO Vauban, into Sara Wallsworth’s place.  I am SO EXCITED.  Moser’s not gonna be here next semester, so there’s nothing keeping me here.  The street cars stop running around 12:30, so if I wanna hang out past then, and I do, I have to stay at Erin’s.  Living in Vauban will make life so much easier and more fun and less clean.  If you have talked to me at all in the past few weeks, you know that I live with a) a wonderful, sweet Swedish girl, and b) the most hysterically clean Germans on the face of the planet.  One of them is never here, but is nice.  The other isn’t necessarily not nice.  She just seems to hate me, that’s all.  I am not, to put it lightly, a clean person.  I’m not disgusting, you’re not going to catch a disease, or a rat, or something, walking into my room.  Let’s call it organized chaos.  Most Germans are pretty clean.  But I have never met ANYONE who needs her place as clean as this girl.  Therefore, life at home is always pretty tense.  My friendly “Morgen!” when I see her in the kitchen around breakfast time is generally met with nary a trace of a smile and some sort of scolding having to do with dishes, or the bathroom floor, or God only knows what else.   

Anyways.  Moral of the story is, I’m moving to Vauban, and Sara’s place is AWESOME.  Colorful and huge and SIX couches (which beats my current count of none) and so cozy and the roommates I’ve met so far seem really chill and friendly, chill being the keyword, really, and the living room is…well, these particular apartments are referred to as “fishbowls,” because they’re entirely made of glass.  I will explain once I move in and take pictures.  But it’s wonderful.  And they have a whole bookshelf in the kitchen dedicated to housing peoples’ dirty dishes until they feel like cleaning them.  MY KIND OF PLACE.  I love it.  Much more me.  

What else has happened?  It snowed last weekend and was beautiful.  I have many pictures.  All the fall semester kids are leaving in 3 weeks or so, and I’m starting to get really sad.  We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at a restaurant on the Schlossberg last night…the night’s entertainment was Klaus, who’s one of the German teachers and hilarious when he’s sober, too.  My next project is pumpkin cream soup.  

On Halloween I made Thanksgiving dinner for a bunch of people, just to be contrary, and my homemade stuffing was delish.  Much better than last night’s, and no damn speck.  Damn speck.  It’s like bacon bits, and the Germans treat it like a spice.  If you ask for something vegetarian, and it comes with speck in it, Germans might not actually think it’s a problem.  Sigh.  

Freiburg is beautiful at Christmastime.  There are lights and decorations and trees everywhere, and of course a Weihnachtsmarkt, a traditional German Christmas market that opened this past Monday and is open til December 23rd.  You get gluehwein there – hot spiced wine.  It’s like being in a movie.  

I’m writing a 10 page Hausarbeit, or term paper, on Evelyn Richter, a German documentary photographer who did a lot of interesting work in the DDR.  I think DDR is GRD or GDR in English?  East Germany.  She’s fascinating.  10 pages in German is scary.  

We’re going to dinner at my lovely theater professor’s house this week.  He’s amazing.  

I saw Fruehlings Erwachen, Spring Awakening, at the Kleines Haus at the Stadttheater a lil while ago with Lauren and Mark.  It was a modernized, really, really cool version.  Of course it was a German theater production, so Melchior did take off all his clothes and do cartwheels at one point.  Oh, Germans.  Sometimes I think there’s so much naked in their plays and films just because they know it freaks out people from other countries.  Sometimes, in life, people take their pants off, sure, but sometimes they leave them on.  But the play was awesome.

We also saw Michael Kohlhaas, which I always always spell wrong, in the big theatre at the Stadttheater.  Kohlhaas is a novella by Heinrich von Kleist.  I wasn’t too excited to see the play version, but OH MY GOD it was one of the coolest most at the same time artsy and practical and AMAZING uses of a stage I have ever seen in my life.  I want to see it again.  The audience sat on risers backstage, and the stage was built out into the red velvet seats of the real audience area.  It was all wood, and they used it SO WELL.  Pieces popped out, things became 3D in weird ways, actors DESTROYED parts of the set…by the end of the night, there was just no set.  The moment they pulled back the curtains for the first time and you just saw this giant wooden stage, fading off into the distance…I just felt my stomach DROP.  And then later on, they pulled these great big sheets off of the seats, and you were hit with a sudden influx of RED from the velvet.  It…God.  Hard to explain.  But amazing.  

I’m sure there’s more to share, but I’m about to go back downtown with Moser to buy her a leather jacket.  While it is hard to leave my newly purchased Ikea wares (went on an Ikea pilgrimage with Mark this afternoon), especially the slippers and the fuzzy blanket, freezing my ass off in the glare of Christmas decorations calls.  I’ll share more later, and maybe even post a few pictures.  

Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving =D

Bis gleich,

Alissa

Wow

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — A University of Kentucky student and another man were arrested Thursday, accused of hanging a life-sized likeness of Barack Obama from a tree on the campus.

 

…

 

Really?

Languages are weird

I forgot the absolute best part of yesterday.  This absolutely cannot go undocumented.

So, in American slang, we have our own beloved goat-related slang expression – “that really gets my goat.”  You have a goat?  I didn’t know you had a goat.  What are you getting for it?  Or is something chasing your goat?  Is your goat ok?   

It’s something I can picture Sarah Palin saying at a rally in, say, Clusterfuck, Middle America – “All those non-pro-America parts of this country really get my goat!”  

Well, I am here to let you all know that the Germans have their OWN goat-related slang expression!  Yes, it’s true!  In English, we might say the we are “not in the mood for” something.  In German slang, it is considered far more normal to instead say “I do not have a goat” for something.  You were going to give me a goat?  If you DID want to do something, would I have gotten a goat out of the deal?  

I invite my friends around the world to share their own goat-related slang expressions, if they come across any.

You can burn the midnight oil with me as long as you want

Oh Tom Waits.  You slay me, you really do.

An assortment - 

I am now Facebook friends with Nicholas Kristof.  I recommend that everyone go to his page on the New York Times website and read every single thing the man has ever written.  Spending 30 years at an OB/GYN clinic in rural Africa is not in my future, but staying aware of these issues and doing what I can, while mixing in everything else in life that I feel passionate about, is.  Kristof has the right idea – he’s a part of both worlds, traveling and experiencing things first hand, and then WRITING about them and making sure the information gets disseminated.  I mean, that doesn’t sound too shabby, as far as life choices go.  

Spring Awakening is closing on January 18th (so is Spamalot).  I am deeply displeased by this news – supporting new, innovative work in the theater is absolutely necessary for America, and Spring Awakening was a cultural explosion in its own right – if you want to hear me wax lyrical on this subject for several hour chunks of time, this can be arranged.  

The word “schlumpy,” most often used in contexts involving me, Maya, and huge grandpa sweaters purchased for quarters at thrift stores on Main Street in Ventura, is apparently a Yiddish-ish version of “schlaempig,” which is German for “slobby.”  Not to be confused with “die Schlampe,” which means slut.  You can call a female a Schlampe, but not a male.  The double-edged sword is still going strong in Germany, it seems.  

We may think the Germans are wackos in how they construct their language – you do not “have fun,” but rather “make fun” – but they think quite the same thing about us.  According to my German teacher, they think the fact that we “make” money is, and this is a direct quote, “absolutely hilarious.”

I just read a review of the new Charlie Kaufman (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation”) film, “Synecdoche New York,” and now I want to see it.  In English, preferably.  This is his directing debut, but he also, duh, wrote it, and I’m just fascinated by the fact that he is known for being a WRITER in the FILM world.  Generally it’s actors and directors in film, and writers in theater…I mean, there are absolutely exceptions, as evidenced by mentioning Raul Esparza around any self-respecting theater nerd.  But in general – how many famous playwrights can you name, compared to screenwriters?  Screenplays are SUPPOSED to be changed and fucked up by directors, actors, especially editors…plays are different.  You can study plays as literature in an English class – how many screenplays can you make that work with?

Enough with the haranguing – the moral is, I love Charlie Kaufman.  Punkt.  

Last night I went to the Deutsches Abend, sponsored by the Uni Freiburg International Club.  At first it was me, Erin, and Chris, who is one of the IES student assistants.  I think he’s around 28, getting his master’s in history, the goal being to teach history and English in a gymnasium, which is sort of the equivalent of a high school (there are like…3 or 4 different versions of high school in Germany, you have to take a test to determine which type you get to go to, the gymnasium being the highest, and the one you pretty much NEED to be in in order to go to college here).  Chris also spent a year studying at Connecticut College, so we had a pleasant time arguing over whether Connecticut has any real worth as a state.  I still say no – it’s simply a very large, flat, annoying roadblock between Massachusetts and New York.  Chris disagreed.

Anyways, it was just the three of us, some very strange modern dancers, and free (IES-paid-for) food for awhile.  We got chocolate, cheese, bread, Freiburger wine…the theme of the night was “Typisch Deutsch?” ie, typically German?  There was a slide show with “typical” German stereotypes/things, bread, cheese, wurst, Angela Merkel, a monkey with a swastika on its arm, FC Bayern soccer-related stuff, beer, more beer…the musical background was a constant loop of the German national anthem and “Das alles ist Deutschland,” which is a satirical song about “typical” German-ness, which anyone who has ever taken a German class has probably been forced to listen to.  It was a weird night.  We eventually decided that the modern dancers were representing recycling – they were covered in newspapers, plastic bags, etc.  It was all very funny, in a very strange way.  

Something very, very important that I did learn was that bitter chocolate is more prevalent in northern Germany, while full milk chocolate is where it’s at in southern Germany.  I’m obviously in the right place.  

Tonight I’m making curry and watching Eddie Izzard DVDs with Erin, Sarah Warner, and maybe Mark.  Saying I have never been so excited in my life is only a slight overstatement.  Erin and I spent a good part of last night whipping out Eddie quotes and applying them to whatever was in the general area.  This is why Erin is wonderful.  Next semester, or hopefully, rather, sometime in December, I’m going to move to Vauban and we are going to reenact Eddie all day, all night.  I could not be more happy.  

Things I am seriously lacking/will soon be seriously lacking in Germany - 

Angels in America.  Erin hasn’t seen it.  I don’t think ANYONE here has seen it.  This is inexcusable.  

Arrested Development, full series.  In Koeln, the only person who broke out their best Gob impression when someone started humming “Final Countdown” was Luke.  We need to up those numbers, big time.  

Burt’s Bees chapstick.  What happens when I’m done with mine?  I did not think to bring more.  This could be catastrophic, folks.  

The Cabaret DVD from last fall.  Apparently Sam Kindler can send it to my house.  What would be just peachy is if my house could then send it to Germany.  Let’s see how I get this to work out.  

I still want to see Krabat.  Somebody come with me!  

I have far less of an idea of what I want to do with my future now, and I am so much happier for it. Anyone who talked to me over this summer/about this summer might remember that I was not the happiest of campers.  Things are pretty much better on pretty much all fronts now.  I don’t like having things too planned out, and feeling too comfortable.  It’s boring.  That’s why it’s so good that I’m here right now.  It’s like a gigantic, year-long breath of fresh air.  

Future things: senior year at Tufts, year-long dramaturgy internship somewhere, preferably in Chicago, Fulbright 2 year English-teaching program in Germany, getting a master’s in Germany, getting a master’s in America, getting a Ph.d. in America and being a theater professor, maneuvering my way into being a dramaturg and being able to support myself that way, working somewhere else in the American theater, doing something having to do with German culture, hanging out in Germany forever and slowly but surely descending into alcoholism…the possibilities are a lot more endless now.  It’s nice.

Things I miss the most right now – LAW AND ORDER, ALL KINDS, ON TV, ALL THE TIME, IN ENGLISH.  It’s like I quit it, cold turkey, and I am slowly going insane without it.  Remember that time I had a dream that Detective Elliott Stabler was my daddy and he’d gotten shot on the job and I woke up and I’d been actually crying in my sleep?  Yeah.  

And on that note, I’m going to go be productive and shower and start going through all the papers my very, very strange German Domestic Politics teacher gave me about women in Germany, which is my topic for our term paper.  And then EDDIE IZZARD.  

Hope you are all well – send me mail!  Also, if you want postcards, email me your addresses so I can make that happen.  

Love and endless repeats of Tom Waits, The Early Years Vol. 1 and 2, 

Alissa

“So please call me, baby/wherever you are/it’s too cold to be out walking in the streets

We do crazy things when we’re wounded
Everyone’s a bit insane
I don’t want you catching your death of cold
Out walking in the rain”

-”Please call me, Baby,” Tom Waits, Early Years Vol. 2

For some reason I have listened to an absolutely massive amount of Tom Waits in the past two days.  It was a total accident.  I thought I hated Tom Waits.  Apparently this is not the case, and I am quite the happy camper right now.  

On the way to the front door of my WG tonight, I heard Loud Guitar Man, who is well known in these here parts for playing guitar at all hours of the day and night and driving Moser almost to the brink of extreme violence.  However, tonight, when I walked past his window, he was playing “The General” by Dispatch.  I mean, not well, but still.  It reminded me of Facey, and it made me smile.

Which, by the way, was absolutely necessary after the two hours I had just passed in complete and utter terror.  

…Let’s explain.

So, today I had my uni courses.  Uni courses are courses offered by the uni.  No, I don’t think you are all stupid and didn’t realize that from the initial description.  You see, I just want to make sure that you all understand that uni courses, because they are offered by the uni, after, in fact, completely in German.  Yes, my other classes are also all in German.  However, as I discovered this evening,  classes in Germans with all your American friends, and classes in German with nine German girls and one German professor in a very small room in the basement of the Deutsches Seminar library from 8pm-10pm are VERY, VERY DIFFERENT.  

My first class wasn’t that horrifying.  The course was called, in theory, Kulturwissenschaften 20. Jahrhunderts, so I was expecting some sort of German culture class having to do with the 20th century, as one might having only read the title.  Apparently German uni logic is ein bisschen etwas anders.  Silly German.  Turns out the class is at the Sprachlehrinstitut, which offers classes for foreign students, and also just lots of language classes.  No one in my class is German – we do, however, have a buttload of Canadians if you are in the market.  Also one apiece from Spain, Italy, England, and Poland, a few Americans, and two, possibly three South Koreans.  German is hard enough to follow coming out of the mouths of native speakers…South Korean accented German is completely over my head.  

Anyways, the class is focused on post 1945 cultural…feeling?  It seems sort of Holocaust focused, I think.  We focus on three main texts, “Todesfuge,” a poem by Paul Celan, an essay by Adorno having something to do with Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft (community), and a book, or essay, or something by Hannah Arendt called “Eichmann in Jerusalem.”  So we just sort of talk about what the pieces say about how people were feeling at the time.  And such.  And at the end we write like a seven page paper.  I think?  I had to wait til after class to translate parts of the syllabus.  Which of course is nothing like an American syllabus.  Oy.  

After the class I was in an excellent mood, having begun to analyze “Todesfuge” in class…it’s an AMAZING piece.  I’m considering putting it up here, and then attempting to make a bad translation of it…the rhythm and syntax are just so important…it’s amazing.  I mean, depressing, because it’s about concentration camps.  But so good.  

So anyways, after class, I booked it to Schlappen, which is my favorite place in the world, and remained there for 3 1/2, almost 4 hours, drinking coffee and eating Flammkuchen and doing homework.  It was glorious.  I read this wooonderful (AND LONG) article about the SPD and CDU/CSU, ie, the two big political parties in Germany and how they started and how they evolved to what they are now.  It was awesome.  Also had to write what I think in an American class would be referred to as a response paper…”What I think about the SPD.”  Last time it was “what I think about immigration.”  In America, response papers are a joke assignment to be completed in the ten minutes you have in the box office between a nice leisurely lunch and your next class.  Here, they are a touch different, given that they have to be in German.  I’m sensing German as a common theme in this post.  Strange.   

My waitress at Schlappen was so sweet and smiley.  When I finally paid, she said “I hope you learned a lot of German today!”  But in a silly sweet, way, that sort of way when you’re lightly making fun of someone, but 100% not in a bad way.  

I then had my art history class, which covers my absolute favorite genres of art…German Expressionism, the Brucke group, Georg Grosz…things like that, but I’m probably going to drop it because I don’t know how much sitting in the dark talking about paintings I can deal with, even when I love the pictures.  I don’t know, today wasn’t so bad, but yesterday I fell asleep.  Given that I was one of three people in the class, and the teacher was the one to wake me up, it was a touch awkward.  

After art I awkwardly powerwalked in the damn cold rain to KG III, where I spent a really special 10-15 minute period of time trying to figure out how to get into a locked area of the building, until I found a little note that said in order to get to the classrooms on the 2nd floor of the Deutsches Seminar, you actually had to enter on the 3rd floor, and then walk down from inside.  

DUMB.  But it’s ok, I enjoy looking lost and confused in front of amused German college students.  No biggie.  

THEN BEGAN THE TERROR.  Ten students, all girls,  of course, and one, probably gay, male professor with long nails, and GERMAN GERMAN GERMAN.  The class is called Literatur auf der Buhne  - eine berufspraktiche Uebung in Dramaturgie.  So, literature onstage, practical look at dramaturgy.  I mean, perfect, right?  

WRONG.  WRONG.  In GERMAN, is what it was.  It was the most German-y two hours I’ve ever spent.  The problem was, this was my first classroom experience in which I was not able to explain myself away as a stupid American who’d only studied German for two years and therefore should be treated like a small child, BEFORE class started.  No.  The whole class, no.  And in general, I am fine with understanding and listening, as long as someone’s not talking about, say, civil engineering, where I know fuck all about the vocab (probably in English too, actually).  And my teachers in my other classes don’t speak that slow at all, in fact I think they speak quite normally, but they don’t just TALK for two hours, without stopping.  And if they’re getting blank stares, they will explain the vocab they just used.  

This was not the case in dramaturgy class.  The case was actually more like the professor talking, and the other girls laughing, and me shaking a little bit and just sort of trying to nod along wisely and hope I didn’t come across as a complete idiot.  The problem with trying to understand a foreign language that you’re learning, is you need a bit of time to process what’s going on, and you have to focus SO hard to try to just get the gist of what’s going on.  Therefore, if you zone out for even a second, which I have been majorly guilty of for reasons that shall remain unnoted on this blog, when you pull yourself back, you are completely lost and it just sounds like Another Language.  Any other language.  It always takes me a second to start understanding things again.  

TWO HOURS.  Two hours of smiling and nodding, but inside going…”I have absolutely no idea what is going on.  Oh my God.”  Talked to the professor afterwards.  We’re seeing all the shows at the city theater, and talking to the dramaturgs and such, but the thing is, there is absolutely no way in hell that I’m seeing Berlin Alexanderplatz again unless I am offered a really serious amount of cash, and I had to communicate that to Mr. German Professor Man.  It was loads of fun.  I started it out by craftily explaining how I had only understand, ehhh, maybe 60% of what he had said for the past two hours, if I was lucky, of course.  Probably less, with the tendency to daydream combined with the tendency to have panic attacks.  

After this I called Erin and had a bit of a verbal vomit couple of minutes, which I think are normally pretty funny, in a hit by a ton of bricks called post-panic attack Me type of way, for those that I honor with them.  Humor makes me feel slightly less like I am going to throw up.  

UGH GERMAN.  

Tomorrow is some sort of typisch Deutsch night hosted by the international club.  It involves free food, so I will most certainly be there.  I sense wine, salami, and cheese coming my way.  Also Germans doing skits about German stereotypes.  What a good way to spend a Thursday night.  

Friday hopefully I have an Eddie Izzard date with Erin and Mark, which I have to admit, I’m more excited for than probably anything else that I’ve done/have planned for the whole week.  Lovely people, and EDDIE.  There is nothing that can make me happier.  

Saturday Tom is hosting a fette fette Party at his place in Vauban.  It was supposed to be Friday, and he switched it to Saturday, and there was a minor revolt from our group, so now I guess he’s actually having zweimal fette fette Partys.  Two of them.  Fette technically means fat, but in this sense it’s more along the lines of phat.  I think we saw it on a flyer, like, a month ago or something.  

Sunday IES is organizing some hike in the Schwarzwald…Julia and Chris are leading it, and I’m a big fan of them both, so I’m going to drag people with me, I think.  

Also maybe at some point in the next couple of days I will do homework.  Or maybe like tonight, since I have to edit the paper I wrote for German class.  It is another in a long line of “gee golly, is Freiburg great!” type papers that they keep asking us to write.  I need a new topic…but the other options were along the lines of “Remember that incredibly, ridiculously difficult text we read by Einstein on, like, the first day of class, about religion and science and difficult German vocab?  Write a paper about that.”

No thanks, German professor.  I’m gonna write about how pretty Freiburg is.  Just think of me as your average 8 year old, please.  The town is pretty.  I like it.  The sun shines.  I like German.  Repeat.  

Anyways, I’m going to restart my Tom Waits CD for the…3rd time in the past hour or so, and think about editing my paper.  Probably I will continue to talk to Casey instead.  I make strong choices!

475/509

 

That would be 475 feet, 509 steps to the top of the south tower of the Koelner Dom.  

 

If you enjoy being dizzy in cramped winding staircases with sweaty, heavy-breathing tourists from all over the world, then climbing the tower is the activity for you!

 

view of Koeln from Dom

 

 

…No, but seriously.  Let’s throw it back to last Wednesday, and work our way back up to the six hours spent in a small van driving back to Freiburg yesterday.  

Wednesday night was special, in that we knew that if we waiting long enough, Wednesday night would turn into Thursday morning, and it would be my birthday.  Now, most of us had papers to write Wednesday night.  That did not stop some of us from getting an early start on the night, but myself, I did not show up to StuSie Bar, which is a student bar by a lake which is probably really pretty during the day, until closer to 11.  I think.  It’s tons huger than our deal old Engelbar, and ridiculously crowded as well.  The main selling point of Wednesdays at StuSie Bar is that shots are 50 cents.  And of course, being that it was almost my birthday, and I was turning 20, someone, probably Sergio, got me 20 sour apple and blood orange shots.

…HAHAHA.  No, I didn’t drink them all by myself.  But lots of fun was had by all.  I also met a girl named Sarah studying with University of Oregon’s Freiburg program, the interesting thing about that being that she’s from Camarillo.  So we bonded, of course.  

 

tower

 

 

We peaced from StuSie after awhile, conveniently right when Mark and Erin showed up, since they had made stronger choices than the rest of us and probably read over their papers more than no times after writing them.  I believe there was a lot of running to catch trains involved, and then I ended up at good ole Schlappen with Alyssa, Erin, and Mark.  I remember this whole thing as being lots of fun and hysterical, but that is probably because I had had 7 shots at StuSie, Alyssa, despite being tiny, is NOT a lightweight at all, and Erin and Mark were completely sober.  

I think it was legit amusing though, because Schlappen pretty obviously wanted to close, and they were playing lots of amusing “time to get the fuck out of our bar” songs, like Bohemian Rhapsody, American Pie, etc etc.  We sang a lot and probably made fools out of ourselves.  I love Schlappen.  

Due to Freiburg not being Berlin and the trams not running past 12:30, I then had a lovely walk home back to Haendelstrasse, an experience that would be repeated again, even earlier in the morning, the next night.  

Thursday morning I had such plans.  Such plans.  So many alarms were set, the goal being that I should accomplish said plans.  It was a gloriously unexpected adventure to groggily awaken at 8:45 and realize that, indeed, it was 8:45, and not 6, class started at 9, and I looked much like I had been hit by a bus.  SO I got to class 15 minutes late, but when I walked in (it was German class), the whole room was filled with balloons, and everyone sang to me, and they’d written happy birthday on the blackboard, and I felt extremely silly but very, very happy.  Apparently I’d missed nothing in the first 15 minutes of class, since they just spent the whole time blowing up balloons.  I really love these people.  I’ve NEVER been surprised in any way for my birthday before.  I still don’t know whose idea that was, but I want to hug them.  

So then I spent all day in class, as is typical for a Thursday.  Thursday night, my theater class went to see a production of Berlin Alexanderplatz at the Freiburg Theater.  Let me tell you, the level with which this was an unpleasant experience was extreme.  I’d been planning to go to the show, go to Schlappen with people, and then Engelbar, and then maybe somewhere else.  

So of course we’re stuck in the theater from 7:30pm-11:30pm, and the show is one big mess ‘o awful.  They took the let’s be expressionistic and not tell a linear story thing a bit far.  I could tell this, even though the show was, surprise surprise, in German, so it was hard to follow.  The set looked, to my eyes, like a giant post-modern apocalyptic sukkah (non-Jews, hit up Wikipedia), which the cast climbed around on.  There was beat boxing, rape, poorly staged violence, lots of naked, and LOTS of yelling.  There were some very angry characters in that show.  God knows what they were angry about, but man did they yell a lot.  Sometimes there were filmed clips of characters, sometimes there were disco dance parties, sometimes someone got viciously bitten in the vagina and then jumped up to join a grinding train of actors in monkey masks gyrating crazily to disco/techno.  

…What?  If the above does not make sense, imagine sitting through it for 3 plus hours.  We then went to a discussion with the dramaturg, which would’ve been really interesting if I wasn’t incredibly angry at the play for fucking up my birthday plans.  

SO we finally get the hell out of there, and me and Erin book it to Burger King, where we devoured unhealthy stereotypical American food, and damn, was it delicious.  Sometimes you just need a one euro cheeseburger…and sometimes you need two.  Don’t judge.  

After that I was upset and depressed and went to meet Alyssa, Moser, and Deirdre at Engelbar, which was crowded as fuck, and Alyssa and Deirdre were about to leave, and I was just…enormously unhappy.  I was just gonna go home and wallow in my unhappiness, which would have been really awful, when, I think it was Lidija, called Moser and said people were going to Shooting Stars, or Shooter Stars, or whatever that shot bar I’ve mentioned before is called.  I was whiny all the way over there, but it turned out to be lovely and made me a lot happier right away.  I ordered a Queen, ie cherries and whipped cream and delicious, and perhaps they put alcohol in it too, and Sergio ordered me something that Ian then set on fire.  As might be expected, I had a bit of a fire/shot mishap, and a great deal of whatever was in the shot glass ended up in my lap, in what I’m sure was a super sexy baby spitting up mashed peas sort of way.  I spent the rest of the night awkwardly sticky and alcohol-smelling.  

Then began an epic night of walking places and being VERY LOUD Americans.  In my memory, the streets are utterly silent, and we sound like Godzilla.  We seem to have made our way to this club called Kamikaze, which was, woops, an indie club and full of sullen indie kids and a very, very awkward dance floor of people jumping around, so we didn’t stay there long.  The next goal was the club on top of the Hauptbahnhof, which is free or reduced or something for students on Thursday nights.  What followed was lots and lots more walking around Freiburg, being that semi-drunkenly walking around with a vague destination in mind has become a common pasttime of ours.  And mine.  There was an excellent 20 minute should we go/should we not go into the club/should you walk home/no you shouldn’t type angsty conversation with Moser, and then I ended up walking home, again.  

Now, I’m realizing that all of this Wednesday/Thursday night stuff actually, when typed out, sounds terribly boring, but I assure you, it was actually REALLY fun.  Being with great people makes everything fun, I think.  So while my birthday night did hit a four hour angry yelling naked German speedbump, it didn’t turn out too bad in the end.  Also, we (I?  Mark?  Someone?  Erin?  I don’t remember at all) decided that we should also feel free to celebrate my birthday this week as well, probably again at StuSie.  I guess we don’t want to leave any stone unturned, celebrating-wise.  Not that we wouldn’t be going to StuSie anyways.  

SO I got 2 hours of sleep on Friday night, and was just ever so pleased to be at the Konzerthaus at 7:30 Saturday morning to load into a van with a bunch of people and go to Cologne and Bonn.  We stopped at the Kloster at Maulbronn for a tour…very pretty medieval cloister, where someone very famous whose name I’ve forgotten went to school.  Herman Hesse?  Maybe.  Then we got on a boat down the Rhein and saw around a thousand castles, just chilling, on the Rhein.  Like, seriously.  There were a LOT of castles.  It didn’t feel real.  Also, IES bought us wine.  We love it when IES buys us things.  I think the point was that we were floating past Mosel grapes, so why not buy some Mosel wine and drink the wine while looking at the grapes.  I think it was a strong choice.  

 

Mark, Kasey, Sarah Warner, me on the Rhein cruise

 

 

We eventually ended up in Koeln, otherwise known as Cologne, where we immediately blew a really, really painful amount of money at a Mexican place that could’ve been a lot better, and then went back to the hostel and played cards.  Next day we went to the Museum Ludwig, which has the biggest collection of modern and/or contemporary (can’t remember?) art outside of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.  

And it was AMAZING.  Our tour only lasted for like an hour, but I stayed an extra two and a half because it was just the most wonderful thing in the world.  If you like Expressionism, and installations, and modern politically charged wonderfulness, and Pop Art, and and and…it’s worth it to go to Koeln, just for the Museum Ludwig.  Really.  

Unfortunately, besides the art museum and the Koelner Dom, Koeln isn’t all that great.  The Dom, ie, the big ass cathedral, is certainly beautiful and impressive, but it’s surrounded by this huge platz where every tourist in the city congregates to move slowly and get in each others’ way.  There are also German middle school students on skateboards playing the scare the tourists game, where they come speeding right towards you and veer off right at the last second.  I watched them do this to a mother with a baby carriage, elderly people…they were just real sweethearts.  

My friends hadn’t stayed in the museum with me and were off in a different museum, looking, as I later heard, at very old rocks, so I climbed to the top of the Dom for one Euro.  I enjoy climbing to the tops of towers, but I’m not sure if my legs can handle any more for awhile…509 steps is a lot.  

I walked along the Rhein to meet everyone, since they had since wandered off to the Chocolate Museum.  I ended up buying a used copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera, in German, from a used bookstand.  The cover’s really cool…I’ll put up a picture soon.  We then did more wandering…basically just continuing the IES Freiburg theme of wandering not knowing where you’re going.  That night, after the requisite wandering, we ended up in a brewery, where 55 glasses of Koelsch were consumed by our table.  Koelsh is the Koeln beer, and it’s basically like water, only beer.  I stole a glass.  We then went to an Irish pub, where they actually carded us, which was strange, and we talked to/I was massively and awkwardly hit on by married German men.  Kasey and I also chatted with the bartender, who was from Van Nuys.  Which is where I was born, in the Valley.  Small world . 

Next day we went to Bonn, which was the capital of West Germany before reunification, and went to the absolutely fantastic German History Museum there…it goes from right after WWII to now, and it’s WONDERFUL.  Again, worth it to go to Bonn just for this museum.  Go with someone who speaks German, or take an English tour, because all the explanatory placards and such have the titles in both German and English, but the actual information, for some reason, only in German.  But it’s AMAZING.

Then we spent 6 hours in the van.  

Today, being Monday, I have done nothing legitimate.  Which is nice.  I think I will now conclude this long, description-filled, not very interesting post, and go get more laundry out of the creepy laundry room in the basement.  Next time I will both do exciting things AND relate them to you all in an exciting way.  Happy Monday!

Alles gut zum Geburtstag…self!

It was my birthday yesterday!  Also sort of the night before yesterday!  Also early this morning!  And also perhaps Tuesday night, since Berlin Alexanderplatz at the Freiburg Theater viciously destroyed my original plans for last night!

Aaaaand I have so much to say, and no time to say it, as I am leaving to spend the weekend in Cologne and Bonn and apparently a monastery and some boat ride through something on the way there…I am not sure…I think everyone will probably be asleep the whole time though, as per usual.

SO anyways, internet?  In Cologne and Bonn?  Who knows.  Birthday fun times descriptions?  Of course!  On Sunday night.  

Schones Wochenende, everyone =)